Sunday, February 12, 2012

Industry Colludes with Pennsylvania Legislature

Pennsylvania's state legislature has
effectively signed a death warrant for some number of residents, who knows how many. Corbett’s about to make it official. Pennsylvanians: Fight back — or suffer the consequences.

The
fracking industry has written a bill that gives itself legal permission to
poison Pennsylvanians—and keeps doctors who treat them once they’re poisoned
from telling anyone else what poisoned them. The bill also essentially
permits all gas drilling
and processing activities anywhere, including in residential areas.

It’s
all being sold as an “impact fee” bill. Counties that want the income will sign
on — and that probably means most counties will.

The
industry was helped in this covert operation by crooks in political office.
Those political criminals should be held accountable (more on this below).

The
174-page bill, HB1950,
was signed in both the House and Senate of the state’s General Assembly, and on
Friday (2/10/12) the Senate passed it to Pennsylvania governor Tom Corbett for
signature.

This
is yet the latest egregious example of industry-state denial of municipalities’
right to protect themselves. I’m not being hyperbolic when I say that this is
the legal permitting of murder — and legalization of coerced suicide.

There
can be no question that the legislators who signed it are in collusion with
industry. They are corrupt. There can be no other explanation. These people
have an obligation to protect the citizens of Pennsylvania, and not only are
they not doing so, but they are also denying citizens the right to protect
themselves—and denying physicians and nurses the ability to protect their
patients!

And
if this outrage does not get Pennsylvanians (and everyone) out in the streets,
in Harrisburg at the governor's mansion demanding a veto, and at the offices of
state legislators, demanding a reversal of the bill’s passage, I do not know
what will.

As Berks-Mont Newsreportedon January 25, Pennsylvania
municipalities currently do “have the legal right to decide where and how gas
development occurs. Both the Municipalities Planning Code and the State
Constitution vest municipalities with the authority and responsibility to
address local environmental and public resources. State Supreme Court rulings
have also made it clear that the state Oil and Gas Act allows municipalities
the right to use zoning codes to restrict the location of gas wells.”

This law negates those rights and completely strips communities
of their rights to self govern. This is a blatant abrogation of the United
States constitution and all the hackneyed assertions that We the People have
any say any longer in crafting U.S. law.

The Guilty Parties

The
bill’s primary sponsor in the House (Assembly) was Brian
Ellis (R-District 11). The 19 cosponsors included Samuel
H. Smith (R-66), Mike
Turzai (R-28), Stan
Saylor (R-94), and Dave
Reed (R-62). But take special note of the three Democrats who cosponsored: Ken
Smith (D-112), Marc
J. Gergely (D-35), and Paul
Costa (D-34). (Contact info for some of them is below, but I hope someone
will take the time to create an easy-to-navigate, easy-click way to call these
creeps out all at once; I don’t have the time or technical expertise.)

If
Corbett signs this bill into law, he will simply confirm what anybody who’s
been paying attention already knows: He cares not for the people or future of
his state.

If
Corbett signs, Pennsylvania activists can kiss goodbye all the tens of
thousands of hours of hard work done by countless volunteers working to stop
fracking from further devastating their state, which until the recent arrival
of this industry was quite beautiful and relatively unpolluted. All those hours
spent in researching all aspects of fracking, from public health to physics,
from environment to economics; in planning forums and community meetings;
educating legislators; debunking industry lies; investigating and challenging unscrupulous politicians; exposing corrupt
NGOs (“Big Greens”); going door-to-door talking to neighbors; writing local
laws to protect communities; and forming coalitions across townships, counties,
states, and nations.

Dorothy Bassett Picks the
Bill Apart

I
learned about this from Dorothy Bassett (with my boldfaces and a couple
parentheticals), who read the bill in its entirety and synopsizes thus:

“[The
bill] includes verbiage that says that when a patient comes in, sick due to
exposure to chemicals, doctors have to request in writing info on [the
chemicals patients might have been] exposed to (think of the time — and
treatment delays involved in this process!) and then have to keep itconfidential.
Also, the industry doesn't have to reveal compounds that have
formed when all these chemicals and materials from underground come together,
nor do they have to report exposure to heavy metals, radioactive substances,
etc., from below.

Given the
problems with airborne and waterborne carcinogenic and neurotoxic substances
from this industry's open pits of toxic wastes, compressor stations, and the
like, this means that entire communities will still be exposed to chemicals
that one or more people have had to see a doctor for, and that the doctors will
have to keep it quiet while the communities are at risk.

The fact
that the industry has included verbiage in this bill that prevents doctors from
revealing the chemicals their patients were exposed to:

1.
indicates that the industry knows that much of the substances they

are
using are a threat to public health
- enough so that emergency

room and
other physicians would see cases of toxic exposure to

fracking
and related chemicals and substances on a regular basis, i.e.

that this
is not a safe process;

2.
indicates that the industry wants to keep it quiet - they know that

if the
health risks of their activities due to chemical exposure (in

air and
water) were to become public there would be such enormous

outcry
that they would be - appropriately - shut down;

3. [shows
that industry knows fracking/ms]is a human rights and a civil
rights violation to the residents and workers affected, and would ultimately
contribute to a public health catastrophe;

4. would
guarantee that other individuals [and] families in the area would not be warned
that they are being exposed on an on-going basis to highly hazardous chemicals
that have made other individuals ill —
often seriously and irreversibly ill.

The bill
also says that the industry will NOT provide information on compounds created
by the chemicals or the interaction of the chemicals with things below ground
or any of the substances that come up from underground.

This
means that they'd provide info only on the frack fluids — which the doctor has
to keep confidential — NOT on what's sitting in frack pits, for example.
Considering that strontium. barium and arsenic are common problems, along with
naturally occurring radioactive substances, and brine, doctors won't know that
the health problem could be coming from these substances from below ground. If they
don't know this, they won't be able to test for or treat for exposure to
hazardous compounds formed by this soup of chemicals, heavy metals, NORMs,
brine and bacteria from far beneath the surface.

The
bill requires that local ordinances “Shall allow well and pipeline location
assessment operations, including seismic
operations and related activities.” Localities “may not impose conditions,
requirements or limitations on the construction of oil and gas operations . . .
” The bill makes sure that not only can municipalities not ban fracking, but
they can’t even regulate how the poisonous operations and their harmful side
effects will be situated and rammed down our throats.

Make Corbett Realize His
Political Future Is at Stake

Now
there is one option available under current law: GET TOGETHER AND STOP CORBETT FROM SIGNING THIS
HORRIFIC BILL.

Should he sign this bill, the governor
of Pennsylvania joins all the legislators who voted for this heinous
"bill" as party to murder — because people will die from fracking (in
fact, quite
a fewalreadyhave).

If he does sign, I see only one
alternative: civil defiance from as many people as can be mustered in
Pennsylvania, to occupy Harrisburg and dog these criminal politicians —
especially the three Democrats and 17 Republicans who cosponsored this bill and
Corbett — for the long haul. It must not be just a one-day event, but an
ongoing demonstration of our rejection of our government's collusion in our own
poisoning.

We need to tell all of these crooks in no
uncertain terms that they have lost the support of Pennsylvania voters and will
never get another term. And will be brought up on criminal charges. And we need
people to start building the legal case against them. Start with the Pennsylvania
Crimes Code Section 25, Section 2502, in which “Murder of criminal code, in
which “Killing by means of poison, or by lying in wait, or by any other kind of
willful, deliberate and premeditated killing, is considered “Murder of the
third degree.”

And that is a crime in any civilized society.
Slow poisoning or quick: The only difference is that it will be impossible for
you to prove the link between frackers and your kid’s cancer when it develops
five or seven or twelve years from now, and the frackers and politicians who
colluded with them will be off the hook.

Hello Maura, could you tell me the page on the document that talks about not being able to report sickness due to fracking? I live in NC and want to write a letter to our newspaper referencing document HB 1950.Thanks!